


Those Two Words

by AstridContraMundum



Series: You mean the world [1]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Episode: s05e03 Passenger, F/M, Fix-it fic, Two one-sided piners find it was mutual pining all along, canon divergent from season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22363372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: If only he had said them, those two words, the whole course of his life might have turned out quite differently.
Relationships: Endeavour Morse/Joan Thursday
Series: You mean the world [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668982
Comments: 75
Kudos: 104





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Drusilla_951](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drusilla_951/gifts).



Morse stood under the preternatural white hospital lights, remembering a time when he had stood somewhere quite different, under a sky half-lit with the soft blue glow of dawn.

“You mean the world to them,” he had said.

“You mean the world to . . .”

Joan had been standing there before him, then, on her own two feet, her face unbruised, her eyes wide, flickering and alive, wavering back and forth over his face.

Willing him to say it?

Forbidding him to say it?

Morse wasn’t quite sure. And so he let those two words die on his lips, falling away to wherever unspoken words go.

_“To me.”_

As he stood now, under the harsh hospital lights, gazing at Joan through a glass window, he could not help but think of what might been if, for once in his life, he had found the courage to speak. Not about the Venerable Bede or about pairs of clues in crosswords that each seemed to point to a time and a place. Not to argue about paintings he had seen in the Rijksmuseum or to point out that all of the victims had been found with snatches of phrases from operas, or that all of the victims had been found wearing wedding bands, or that all of the victims had suffered deaths by drowning.

Not to speak about a case.

But to say what was in his heart.

_“To me.”_

If he had said them, those two words, Joan might have gone away with him. She might be sitting with him now, somewhere elsewhere, talking over coffee; she might be whole and laughing, not lying still and pale, with dark shadows under his eyes and a blossom of bruises caressing her face. 

And it was his fault, all his fault. Even his proposal of marriage had been a farce, at once too desperate, too forced, too slapdash, too . . . too _something._

“Marry me.”

She had looked at him uncertainly.

And then her shoulders seemed to sag.

“Morse. I don’t want your pity,” she murmured.

And he hadn’t known what to say. _He_ pity _her?_ How could she think such a thing? Surely she knew how awkward he was, how lonely and alone. It would be her taking pity on _him,_ if she were to say yes. Not the other way ‘round.

She smiled, then, a pained thing, as if to make light of his words, as if to help him out of the corner he had backed himself into.

“And never mind what Dad would say," she said, with just the hint of a rueful laugh in her voice. 

And Morse turned away, looked out the window. It was the old defense, one he knew well, to laugh at himself, before someone else could laugh at him. To laugh to save what was left of his heart before it might be broken further.

But perhaps she hadn’t been laughing.

Perhaps she had been waiting.

Perhaps it had not been a refusal, but a test. As much as she would hate to admit it, Joan was her father’s daughter. She had his same boldness, his courage. How could she marry a man who was too afraid to tell her that he loved her?

Had she wanted to know, if he would be brave enough to say them? Those two words?

Those three words?

Morse hardly knew.

And so he said nothing. 

It was just like at Blenheim Vale.

He was too slow.

A doctor came in through the hall, and a nurse, who had been standing at some distance, nodded to him in greeting. And then nodded to Morse.

The doctor sighed, ran his hand through his dark hair, and then came to stand alongside of him.

“It was a bad fall,” he said.

“Will she be all right?” Morse asked.

“We’ve given her something to help her sleep, that’s all,” the doctor said.

He opened the door to Joan’s room and Morse followed. And now he was standing right over her, listening to the quiet of her breathing.

“Just one of those things,” the doctor said. “Mother nature. Still. She’s young and fit. Give it a month or two, and you’ll be able to try again. Better luck next time, hm?”

And Morse felt his heart skip a beat in his chest.

It was too much.

If it things had worked out differently, and it had been his child, he would have loved it in a hundred ways. If it had not been his child, he would have loved it in a hundred ways. But it was too late for that now. Now there was nothing. Nothing to do but to leave her to herself. To let her go her way. 

It was true, what he had told Miss Frazil as they sat in her car out at Bramford Mere.

He was lost.

And she was lost. She had gone out, looking for something, but she had not found it.

He was lost and she was lost, and, somehow, they never managed to find each other.

He leaned over her, then, his eyes searching her face. She looked peaceful and somehow younger than she had when he first met her, on that morning when she answered the door, holding one hand onto the frame, as if she intended to go on in such a manner all through her life—not slouching to make herself smaller, not quietly, as he did—but taking up every inch of space she possibly could.

_"I think it’s best that you do as you’re told."_

He pressed his lips to her forehead and closed his eyes, inhaling the scent of her shampoo. And it felt so right, as if he had kissed her so a hundred times before. It felt so right, that it was hard to believe that it had come to this, to a chaste kiss goodbye.

He stood and turned and left the room, and then headed out the long hallway, his vision inexplicably blurred. He could just make out the white of the tile and the white of the floor, and then in red, the words “Way Out” repeated again and again on the signs above him as he passed. 

But it wasn’t a way out.

His body could walk out of this hospital, but his heart could not. It would remain, there, he knew, by Joan’s bedside.

No, not there. For Morse had left it even further behind.

He had left it somewhere on that stretch of the pavement, where it remained still, stuttering and struggling, choking on those two words.

_“To me.”_

****

Fred Thursday stood under the harsh hospital lights, waiting for the doctor to give him the go-ahead, the all-clear to question the victim. It had been a ruthless stabbing, straight to the gut, but it was a certainty that Bernie Hall would have had a good look at his attacker.

If only he’d talk.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot, bristling with impatience. Was it one of Eddie Nero’s lot? Or someone in the entourage of this newcomer, Cromwell Ames?

“Ah, Inspector Thursday,” said a nurse, bustling down the hall.

Thursday glanced up at the sound of his name. He recognized the nurse from other visits he’d made to the Radcliffe, and so he assumed that she was preparing to ask him something about the case. But instead she said something else, something Thursday did not in the leastways expect.

“Here to see your daughter, are you? She’s in room 413.”

And Thursday stopped short.

“413?” he asked.

_His daughter. His daughter in hospital. In room 413?_

“Yes,” the nurse said. The matronly woman scanned his face, her brow furrowing in concern, and then she put a comforting hand on his arm.

“Now don’t be alarmed,” she said. “She’ll be quite all right. It was just a bad fall. That’s all.”

“Here,” she added bracingly. “I’m on my way there now. I’ll take you up. All right?”

All thoughts of Bernie Hall seemed to evaporate as Thursday nodded and turned to follow her. There were only three people on earth could deflect him from a case.

And Joan was one of them.

The nurse led him to an elevator, and they rode in silence up to the fourth floor. Then she continued on down a long hallway, stopping at a window. “She’s just there,” the nurse nodded. “Resting comfortably.”

Thursday looked through the window.

With her eyes closed, her face still, Joan looked again like his little girl.

His little girl, but with a bruised face.

And Thursday felt his old heart, the heart he sometimes forgot he had, breaking.

“A shame that you just missed your son-in-law. Families are a great comfort at a time like this,” the nurse said. 

His . . . .

His _son-in-law?_

And at once his broken heart fused, like shards of glass. No. Into something of concrete and steel. And his fists curled at his sides.

Had that bastard had the guts to lay a hand on his girl and then to come right here, posing as his _son-in-law?_

He’d _kill_ the bastard. He’d _kill_ him. He’d wouldn’t rest until his worn hands ripped that miserable piece of . . .

“Are you quite sure you're all right?” the nurse asked.

“Yes,” Thursday said, tersely.

“Now I know some men feel no man is good enough for their little girl,” the nurse said, knowingly. “But at times like this, you need to pull together, for the young lady’s sake.”

“Is that so?” Thursday said, but his thoughts were miles away, in an underground garage, where he planned to wait and then he'd . . .

“Yes,” the nurse said. “And for his. You should go easy on him. The poor thing looked broken-hearted. Those big sad blue eyes. I think half my young nurses at the check-in station would be quite ready to fall in love with him, if he wasn’t already spoken for.”

And the gears in Thursday’s fevered mind ground to a halt.

Not Ray, then.

No one would describe Ray thus.

There was only one man Thursday knew who might produce such an unconscious effect on a gaggle of nurses. The same man who, under an encouraging look from some young girl or another, might suddenly “forget” to mention a loaded gun in a drawer, or “lose” a notebook.

How often had he seen female witnesses—suspects, even—flutter over him, and he flutter right back?

Morse.

Morse, sticking his nose in again. 

Thursday felt a different surge of anger, then, a lesser one, something more akin to impatience—but then he paused for a moment, as if realizing his next move might make all the difference in each of their lives. 

Much as she would hate to admit it, Joan was her father’s daughter. The more he pushed, the more she would push right back, and in the opposite direction. Even if only just to spite him.

Even if she ended up spiting only herself.

And all of this, he realized, had to stop. 

How many more ways could they find to hurt one another? To sabotage themselves? 

They had stung, the words that Joan had thrown out at him, at that tawdry little flat, as if all that he and Win had ever dared to dream of was worth nothing but her contempt.

_“Is that what you want me to be? The engagement party, Uncle Charlie’s blue jokes at the wedding, two-up and two-down in some new estate, every house the same, with a pram in the hall?”_

But Joan was young. She didn’t understand.

Win and her friends had waved off schoolmates and brothers, and sweethearts and lovers and even young husbands—wedding bands still loose behind boyish, knobby knuckles—off to war. All of the dreams Joan had so sneered at, to her mother had once seemed wildly out of reach. How many of her friends had Win held, crying in her arms, as they clutched a telegram full of official gratitude and mourning?

“We came to recognize them, those black cars,” Win had said. “When I saw one, my first thought was always a prayer. That it wouldn’t be you. That they wouldn’t come to my door.”

She shook her head. 

“But they were coming to _someone’s_ door, weren’t they?”

“It made you feel like hell,” Win said, and Thursday startled to hear her speak so.

Joan did not understand. She didn't understand how they could not take for granted the things she felt beneath her care. 

But Joan was right, too. Perhaps she _did_ have a point. Perhaps what he and Win had dreamed of wasn’t quite enough, after all.

“Cleaning offices?” Thursday had said.

“There’s no shame in it,” Win had replied.

“Never said there was,” Thursday said.

And there _wasn't_ any shame in it, there was never any shame in hard work. But his Win had spent a life cleaning up after the three of them, a labor of love, the whole point of which, at the end of the day, was to see the kids off, and to see herself out of a job.

And what did she have now? Cleaning offices? Of course, she could clean offices. But she was capable of so much more, his Win.

Thursday heaved a heavy sigh.

There was a time he might have been less than happy with the idea, of his bagman stepping out with his daughter. He had wanted another sort of life for her, another sort of man. A man who worked nine to five in an office somewhere, who kept his hands clean.

But Morse.

Morse was a different sort of copper altogether. Morse was a man he trusted with his life. Surely, he could trust him with a piece of his heart? That stubborn and determined piece that so did not want to be, but was, nevertheless, just that?

“She’ll be all right, then?” Thursday asked.

“Oh, yes, she’ll be right as rain in a few weeks," the nurse assured him. 

“Thank you,” he said.

And then he slowly turned and went down the long hall.

And vowed to himself that he would pretend that he had never learned that Joan was here. And vowed he would not say one word about it. 

He had learned to trust Morse, after all.

Perhaps it was time he learned to trust Joan as well.


	2. Chapter 2

Even though she knew it was foolish, Joan couldn’t help herself. Every time the bell above the door chimed, signaling the arrival of a new customer, she looked up, wondering if it might be him.

But it was a university town. There were plenty of bookshops in Oxford, after all.

It was a ridiculous fancy, she knew, to think that Morse might simply stumble into the shop one day. Especially now, on a quiet Tuesday morning, when he most certainly must be out on a case.

An elderly man in a tweed jacket approached the counter, handed her a book and a few notes, and she rang up the sale with deft fingers, hitting the keys so that the drawer of the cash register lurched open with a rattle and a resounding clang.

And then another bell sounded. Not the sharp one of the register, but a ringing one, bright and clear, one that trilled like a small bird from its perch above the door. 

And, once again, she looked up.

But it was a woman with her small daughter.

Not Morse.

She smiled and nodded to the pair as they came in and then turned her attention to completing the sale.

It was because of the money, she told herself.

That’s why she was so eager to see Morse again. So that she could give him the money that she kept for him, tucked inside a blue envelope in her purse. So that she could repay him for the crumpled notes he had given her that night at his flat, the ones he had fished out of an old coffee can.

She didn’t want to be beholden to him. Or to anyone.

Even though, she thought, ruefully— even as she smiled and handed the elderly man his package—it was perhaps a little late in the day to start worrying about that.

She understood, in retrospect, that she had most likely been given special enough treatment as it was. If she were anyone else, after all, she certainly would not have been allowed to waltz off, to walk away from Oxford, having given only a brief statement to Jim Strange in that dank alleyway smelling faintly of garbage and Cole Matthews' blood. Surely, if she were anyone else, she would have been asked to come down to the station, to confirm the identity of the culprits in a line-up, to hop through any number of hurdles and twists of red tape.

Did it not occur to her that her father—the very man from whom she was so keen to prove herself independent—might be forced to call in all sorts of favors, to pull all sorts of strings to get her off the hook?

No. It hadn’t occurred to her.

It hadn’t occurred to her at all.

She closed the door of the register with a satisfying click.

Well.

No more.

And then she frowned softly to herself.

Because the greater question, the question that kept her up at night, that left her staring at the blue moonglow clock at four in the morning, was this:

What did Morse know, about what had happened?

What didn’t he know?

Joan herself wasn’t sure.

She remembered, vaguely, the young doctor at the hospital explaining it all to her. That she had fallen. That she had lost the baby. Saying each thing to her so carefully, so very carefully, as if he told her what she did not already know.

And then, he told her one thing that she didn’t.

“Your neighbor, a Mr. Booth, found you on the landing,” he said. “He called your husband for you. He was here, just an hour or so ago, your husband. The head nurse just mentioned.”

Through the haze of pain and drugs and weariness, Joan had felt herself sinking further. 

Oh, hell.

Ray?

She certainly did not want Ray here. Not now. Not ever. And how on earth would Mr. Booth have gotten in touch with _him_? Surely, Ray was at his own flat, with his wife and . . .

“Your neighbor told me he found your husband’s work number in your purse. Took the liberty of calling. Smart girl. I try to tell all my patients who are expecting that they should keep an emergency number where it can be found. No one thinks she will be the one who will need it. Still. . .” he said . . . “You’re young and fit . . . better luck next . . .”

But Joan’s thoughts had seized upon that one key phase, and circled there, to the exclusion of all else.

_Your husband’s work number in your purse._

And suddenly, she was miles away, away from the white hospital and the soothing voice of the condescending, nice young doctor. Suddenly, she was standing in a red call box in Leamington, as a soft and sudden summer rain fell outside, her hands shaking as she thumbed through the thick and tattered pages of the telephone book.

Under one arm, she held a newspaper tightly tucked, a late edition of the _Oxford Mail_ , bearing the headline _Teenage Heartbreak: Wildwood to Disband._

It wasn’t the news of the Wildwood that sent her heart racing under the curve of her ribs, but rather a separate, corresponding article detailing the arrest of a young woman named Emma Carr, an article that told the tale of a young detective constable who had uncovered the truth about Nick Wilding’s alleged overdose, who had been drugged himself during a confrontation at Maplewick Hall, and who was now in hospital, where he was in stable condition, the doctors hopeful he would make a full recovery. 

The constable in question was left unnamed—no doubt out of kindness on Miss Frazil’s part—but it didn’t take the skills of a detective constable to guess which of her father’s men might land himself in such straights.

Who else would go off alone, half-cocked, and end up in a hospital bed?

Morse.

And sure enough, when she dialed the number listed under _Morse, E_ , with one trembling hand, the line on the other end rang disconsolately. She waited and listened. And it rang and rang.

And rang.

It was as good as a confirmation.

She hung up the receiver, scribbled the number down on a spare bit of paper, and thrust it deep into the bottom of her purse. There, it looked inconspicuous enough so that—even if Ray did take a look through her bag—it would, with luck, escape his notice.

For the next two days, she rang at odd times—any time she had the excuse to pass by the call box—hoping each time that Morse might pick up, that she would hear his voice, that she’d learn he was all right.

And then on the second afternoon, it happened. She didn’t have any change to spare, but she couldn’t resist trying. She’d call collect. It wasn’t as if it would be an expensive call, she told herself, as she gave the operator the number. It may well be that he still would not answer, and even if he did, she would simply . . .

“Hello?”

Her breath caught in her throat.

It was Morse. And, what was more, he sounded all right. His voice so clear, she could almost see him, back at his tiny basement flat—the familiar voice strong and low and faintly curious, sinking low on the final _O_.

She steadied herself under the cold wash or relief that swept through her and prepared to hang up the receiver.

“Miss Thursday,” he said.

And then she went still.

It wasn’t a question, but a statement.

He knew.

He knew somehow.

And how could he know? It could have been anyone— work, a wrong number.

It was uncanny; she felt as if those big blue eyes could see clear through the line.

Could see clear through her.

Quickly, she hung up the receiver with a heavy clang.

She had her reassurance; she had gotten what she wanted.

It should have been enough.

But somehow, at odd times, she heard it, that low and mournful voice, rolling out to her as if from over the line, as if trying to reach her from some unreachable distance.

_Hello? Miss Thursday._

She quirked a rueful smile.

It was the perfect metaphor for them, wasn’t it?

_Hello? Are you there? Yes? No?_

But, who knew? Perhaps if they ever had time to talk, to really talk. . . . not as DC Morse and DI Thursday’s daughter, not as a bank teller and a police officer conspiring during a holdup . . . but to meet somewhere, as just themselves, as Joan and . . .

Well, whatever his name was. 

E . . .

E for _something._

It wasn’t as if she expected him to walk into the bookshop, exactly.

But she certainly didn’t expect to run into him at the chemist’s, on a random Monday afternoon, poring over a lipstick display.

She stopped short before the glass door.

There he was, after all of this time, standing with the sales girl, his brow furrowed in concentration as he studied a tube of lipstick with a solemn and determined air. It was almost comical, the juxtaposition; his austere blue eyes, his sharp and serious gaze, set amidst the backdrop of a candy-colored cosmetics display.

Immediately, Joan’s imagination went into overdrive: Doubtless the murderess had left a lipstick-stained cigarette in an ashtray, and Morse thought determining whether it was Max Factor’s Crimson Sunset or so Revlon’s Sunset Blush might prove relevant. She couldn’t help but smile. Didn’t he know that most women who wore lipstick might own any number of shades? That even she, right now, had two very different tubes at the bottom of her purse?

Well.

Of course, he didn’t.

She pushed the door open, determined to remain nonchalant—who knew what he thought of her now, after all?—but it was too late—she could feel it, her face glowing with it. Try as she might, she just couldn’t keep the broad smile off her face.

“Hello, Stranger,” she called.

He looked up, his big eyes wide, as if he had been momentarily knocked breathless, his mouth falling into a round _O._

From the stunned look on his face, she could tell at once.

He knew.

He knew everything.

******

They walked side by side along the pavement, and it was all right, really. Joan might have thought it would be unbearable, looking into his face and finding that he knew all the worst of her, all of her secrets, but somehow, knowing for certain wasn’t half so awful as the guessing, the wondering, the tossing about in the long hours before dawn.

He might not know every detail, but he knew enough. Of course, he did. He was a detective after all, and she, in her panic, had left a trail a mile wide.

But he didn’t seem to judge her for it. If anything, he seemed pleased to see her, shy of her, even, his face breaking into his old, familiar, awkward grin. When they left the shop, he fell in right alongside her, as if it was the most natural thing in the word.

They did set a nice pace together; the way in which he rolled along, with his hands in the pockets of his gray car coat, seemed to shorten his lanky stride a bit, enough so that she didn’t have to quicken her step to keep up with him. Such things were important in the balance of things, she had come to learn: that a man not walk so quickly that you felt you were always forced to struggle to keep up, to mold your pace to his.

“So are you back? Or are you just visiting?” he asked.

Joan frowned. He saw her father every day. Had he not told Morse?

“Dad didn’t say?” she asked. “I’m back. Couple of weeks now. But not home.”

“They must be pleased, all the same. Your parents.”

Morse might suppose so. But seeing as her father hadn’t even _mentioned_ her . . .

“Think so,” she said. “Mum definitely.”

“I’m sure they both are,” he said, and here, his voice fell to that lower timber, as if her was speaking to her conspiratorially, as if he knew what she had been thinking.  
  


_He did miss you. He wasn’t the same all the while you were gone. You might not believe it. But there you are._

She smiled and continued to walk along, her spirits suddenly buoyed. It was all easier than she would have imagined, seeing Morse again, talking to him. It was a beautiful day, and it felt right, walking so, the swish of her pale green coat, the click of her heels measuring up perfectly against his slouched and lolling gait, the bounce of her dark curls as she glanced up, his wavy and fiery downturned head. 

She found that it was surprisingly simple to read Morse, after all.

When she had first met him, she was struck by how closed-off he seemed, how turned inward. So difficult, it was, trying to guess what the poor sod was thinking, hovering about the table as he did, as if keen to beat it out the door.

But not now. Not anymore. He had grown up, it seemed, while she wasn’t looking. Or perhaps she had. Or perhaps she had finally learned to crack the code, after all of these years.

Whichever it was, it made it all the easier to admit the truth.

“It’s not the same,” she said. 

“No,” he replied. “No. I imagine not.”

There was a heaviness there, in Morse’s words, as if he knew all about it, all about her, and for or a moment, she felt a twinge of annoyance… What did he know about it, exactly? How could he presume to know how she felt? She had had quite enough of . . .

But then, unbidden, her thoughts circled back, to a time before the holdup, to an afternoon when her father, freshly released from hospital and looking tired and drawn and somehow smaller than she had ever remembered seeing him, had sat in the chair in the den, waiting for the phone to ring.

Every hour or so, he’d pick up the receiver, dialing with a violence that wasn’t strictly necessary. 

“Morse released yet?” he’d bark into the receiver, before breaking into a fit of coughing.

“Well, tell them to get their fingers out!”

And then, in the days afterwards, the long, dour silences at dinner. His bagman, his protégé, had been released from prison at last, but he had disappeared, failed to report back in to the nick.

Morse had run away, just as she would a year later.

She almost didn’t understand herself, what had driven her to go that morning.

But perhaps Morse had, all along.

She took a deep breath. Perhaps it was best to clear the air, once and for all.

“Mr. Booth, my neighbor in Leamington, said he called you,” she said.

“Yes. A fall, they said.”

And well she heard it in those two words, in the careful quotations he put around the words “ _they said.”_

As if to say: but you and I know that’s not true.

But it was.

It would have to be.

Joan stopped on the pavement and looked up at him.

“I slipped,” she said, laying a crisp and careful emphasis on the two words of her own. As if to put a lid on that box. As if to shut the door on further inquiry.

And it was the truth, wasn’t it? It wasn’t a lie. It was the best description possible of all of those long, wretched weeks.

_I slipped._

Morse smiled then, a small smile of understanding, rather than of mirth. And perhaps, yes, he did understand. He was an intensely private person, after all. She didn’t even know his Christian name, after all these years. Funny how she had asked once, back when she hardly cared.

“Doesn’t care for his Christian name,” her father said, in that tone that said that’s that.

_Hall stand, Joan._

She found herself quirking a mischievous grin. Perhaps his first name actually _was_ "Detective Constable." Or rather, no, because . . .

“Heard about your Sergeant’s,” she said.

“Oh yes. It came through, in the end.”

“Congratulations.”

He shrugged, looking suddenly bashful.

“Detective Sergeant Morse,” she said, letting the new name roll out grandly, as if she were announcing him at a ball. “Things change.”

“Yes,” he said.

He was the one to draw to a stop on the pavement, then, and she thought he might say more.

_Things change. I’m not the same, and you’re not the same, and the world keeps turning on. We’re older and not the soft and hopeful things we were when I stood on the threshold of your parents’ door. When you were still a girl, really, and I was still a boy._

_No. We’re not the same._

_But perhaps we might meet where we are now?_

But instead, he said nothing, just stood there, allowing the silence to roll on and on.

If only there were something to fill the it.

But there was. How had she forgotten?

That was the whole point, after all.

She reached around and pulled the blue envelope from her purse.

“Here,” she said. “This is for you.”

His face fell into lines of confusion.

“It’s the money that I . . .”

And as soon as she began to speak, he took a step back, waving his hand, as if he couldn’t possibly. . .

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m staying with a friend. A girl I knew from school. I’m just staying on her sofa, really. So, I’ve been able to save a bit.”

He nodded then, and took the envelope with good grace. For one awful moment, she thought that it all might make things more awkward between them still, that he might take yet another step back, but instead, he stepped forward, looking at her as forthrightly as he ever had.

“Are you alright?” he asked. “I mean. Really alright?”

Yes.

He knew.

She turned away and took yet another deep breath. Then she looked back up into his face.

“Something happens. You have to look a bad thing in the eye. Break the spell.”

A rueful smile. Yes, he knew. But he also, perhaps, understood.

And, for once, Morse was right.

There was nothing more to say about that.

“See you around,” she said, and she began to walk away.

“It’s a small town,” he conceded. 

“Well,” she said, and she swung back, spinning a bit on her heel, as if she were a girl again, as if, much to her astonishment, the best part of her old self had survived, after all, was still there, beneath the new, harder shell.

“I know where you buy your lipstick now,” she called.

Things change.

And they don’t.

Because Morse quirked a smile at her words—the same shy smile that flickered across his face years ago when she had told him that he had best just do as he was told.

****

Things change.

And they don’t.

Because there she was, answering the door to him as he came to collect her father, in a mad sort of parody of the morning on which they had first met. 

“Miss Thursday,” he said, with that same old, stiff formality. “Bit early for you.”

“Taking mum out for the day,” Joan explained, opening the door wider to allow him into the hall.

“She’s spoiling me,” her mother gushed, as she came in from the kitchen. “We’re going to pick out a new lamp for the flat and have some lunch. At Burridge’s.”

Joan winced. It was hard to look at, the radiance on her mother’s face, Years ago and years ago, it would have been she, Joan, excited over a mundane outing—a trip to the playpark or to a restaurant for lunch, she hopping from one foot to the other by the door, her mother calmly gathering up her purse. Now it was almost as if the tables had been turned. Or, no. Now it was almost as if her mother was so overjoyed at her return that she was almost afraid of her, her own daughter. As if she thought that if she did or said the wrong thing, Joan might disappear again.

Morse gave a nervous laugh. He must have seen it, too.

“That will be nice,” he said.

And then the idea came to her, as if out of the blue.

Why not just ask?

It was 1968, after all. And it was only a party. Hardly a dinner date.

“I’m having a flatwarming,” she said. “Wednesday. Eight o’clock, if you’re free.”

“Thanks,” he said.

And immediately, he looked up at the ceiling as if trying to come up with some excuse.

Oh, god.

Just when she thought it all couldn’t possibly be more humiliating . . .

“Only if you’re not . . . only if you’ve got nothing on,” she hastened to add, as if to take it all back. “I know you’re busy with . . .”

“Work,” they both said at once.

“We’re off, Fred,” her mother called, bundling into the hall.

Joan turned to look up the stairs—the very stairs she once went up and down every day, but now never did.

“Goodbye, Dad!”

And there was nothing.

Joan narrowed her eyes. What was Dad playing at, anyway? It wasn't like him to drag something like this on and on. Usually, with Dad, it was one burst of bad temper and the storm was over.

But lately, for these past few weeks, it was as if he was going out of his way to ignore her. As if he was _pointedly_ ignoring her.

And Morse, too. It wasn’t like him to keep Morse waiting in attendance like a page upon king. Why didn't he simply get his arse downstairs? What? Was he curling his lashes?

Was he cross with Morse, too, for having kept his word to her, for not having told him she was in Leamington?

She’d never make it up to him, she supposed. He’d never forgive her. Although what was there to forgive? If she had made a mess of things, she had been the one to suffer for it. It was her life, not his. 

“He can’t hear over the taps,” her mother murmured, as always, making an excuse for him. “He won’t be a minute,” she added to Morse. “Go on through.” 

Joan shook her head. She was just going to open the door, when Morse called after her. 

“Is there anything you need?”

Joan turned in surprise.

“For the flat,” he clarified. 

Joan startled with the realization that he was still mulling it over, that she had left him behind somehow, standing somewhere back on the pavement.

“Just bring a bottle,” she said.

She smiled then and followed her mother out the door.

Who would have thought it?

For once, they’d be meeting on neutral ground, in a place that had nothing to do with his job or her father.

But just as a man and a woman at a party.

Just that easy.

****

The riff of a psychedelic guitar churned on through the falling night, muffled by the hum of the mingled conversations of the guests who had gathered in their small flat, milling all about the place—by the window, in the hall, on the narrow stair—cradling bottles in their hands and drinking from plastic tumblers.

There was music and voices and the calls of old friends from across crowded rooms, there was the cool glow of the blue tasseled light swinging precariously from the ceiling, and the warm shimmer of a lava lamp in a darkened corner, but Joan might as well have been back at the quiet, sunlit bookshop.

Anytime someone rounded the corner from the stairwell, she looked up.

She had just given up on Morse coming ‘round, had just resolved to pay better attention to the guests who _had_ bothered to turn up, when suddenly, there he was, his auburn hair gleaming a burnished red-gold in the low light, making him to stand out from the crowd.

His suit and tie clashed fabulously with the uncertainty and confusion on his face—an expression quite different from the one of button-upped solemnity he typically wore while waiting for her father—so that, paradoxically, he looked both older than the other guests and younger, too.

As soon as he caught sight of her, he broke into an eager, daffy smile, the likes of which she had never quite seen before on his face.

She couldn’t help but smile back at the sight of it, so broadly that her face almost hurt, even though she told herself she would remain cool and sophisticated if he happened by, after all that awkwardness back at her parents’ front door.

“You made it!” she exclaimed.

He held out two bottles of wine as she approached.

“I didn’t know if you liked red or white, so I brought one of each,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Great!”

And she laughed, a breathy sort of laugh that sounded like a nervous laugh even to her own ears.

It was a stupid laugh, really.

Oh, hell.

She cleared her throat.

“What can I get you?” she asked.

And that was better; now she sounded far more mature, far more like a hostess welcoming a guest to her home—her own first, real home—far more like a woman of the world.

“Oh. Just a beer please,” he said, already shrugging his thin shoulders from his jacket, as if to fit in better to the tenor of the party, as if he was planning to make an evening of it.

She swooped down toward the small table and picked up an amber bottle. For one awful moment, she feared she might make a bungle of the thing, but, miraculously, she managed to pop the cap in one deft and graceful movement.

“There you go.”

She handed him the beer, and he titled his head back, taking a drink. And then he smiled. 

And then they looked at one another.

And then that . . .

Was that.

Already, it seemed, they had run out of words.

Even though there seemed to be so much to say.

But that was all right.

She didn’t know him well, exactly, not really. But she did know him well enough to know that a party like this must certainly not be his scene. It would be better, much easier for them to talk up on the rooftop. And she was sure he was the sort of man who would appreciate the lovely view of the city at sunset.

“Here,” she said, and, for a moment, her hand twitched at her side, as if to take his hand in hers to lead him, but then, thank God, she let it fall, just in time.

Instead, she gestured toward the stairs with a nod of her head.

“Here. Come on. You’ve _got_ to see this.”

****

Outside, the sun was falling fast, diffusing the white and silver-gray domes and dreaming spires of Oxford with a soft and golden light, illuminating the skies so that the clouds glowed pink, like bright veins of mineral in marble.

“It’s the view I fell in love with,” she said, crossing the rooftop to the low wall that surrounded the edge.

“Yes,” he said.

She had expected him to follow, to come and stand alongside of her, but instead, his voice sounded as if he was further away than she would have imagined, as if they had been walking together from the chemist’s and she had left him behind somehow, somewhere back on the pavement.

She stole a glance over her shoulder, and, sure enough, there he was, standing stiffly, only halfway from the window from which they had just climbed to get out onto the roof. 

“You can’t see from there,” Joan chastised. “Come closer.”

But the stubborn sod remained just where he was.

“This is as close as I get,” he said. “You come here.”

What was this? Why shouldn’t she enjoy the view of a beautiful summer evening? Did he really find her so idiotic that he thought she might fall over the edge?

Well. He might.

_I slipped._

Joan frowned. “I’m not gonna jump,” she said stridently.

Finally, Morse shuffled forward, as though his lanky legs were suddenly made of lead.

Then he stopped, almost pointedly, a good ten feet away.

Oh, for god’s sake.

After all of this time, after years of shy smiles and furtive looks, here he was, standing alone with her under a golden sky, overlooking a beautiful city as the light fell, drifted down, as if the very sun itself was bestowing its blessing down upon them.

And still he was giving her a wide berth, as standoffish as a stray cat, as prim as a nice young boy walking her home from a parish picnic.

What was he playing at, anyway?

She glared at him, looking upon him in wonder, and then, as if to add insult to injury, he shrugged.

He _actually_ shrugged. Shrugged and shook his head in bemused bewilderment, as if he were the very picture of all innocence, as if _she_ was the one who was slightly barmy to be looking so cross.

Was he trying to let her down easy, hiding behind that old formality again?

Or was he really that thick?

Who knew?

Either way, it was humiliating. Not the fact that she had lured him up here all for nought. But the fact that for weeks—for weeks and weeks—her heart had leapt at every ring of the bell over the bookshop door, in the secret hope that it might be him. 

And why?

To what end?

How had she ever convinced herself that she might have learned to understand him? Men were all a bafflement, weren’t they? One just as perplexing at the next. Perhaps she ought to swear off the game a while, clear her head, find her own direction before she jumped back into the pool.

Painful as it all was, perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps it was high time they get the matter resolved, one way or the other, so that they both of them could move on.

Perhaps someone other woman out there could get something out of Morse other than smiles and shrugs and monosyllables, and . . .

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” she said, keeping her words as offhand as she possibly could.

“Her name is Claudine. She’s a photographer. Well a photojournalist. Something interesting anyway.”

Yes.

Claudine.

The girl with the arty bob and the sophisticated smirk, who was always in an out of the bookshop, attempting to order one out-of-print or difficult-to-locate book or another. 

They would be perfect for one another.

They would smoke French cigarettes over small dark coffees in thick white cups and talk about Sartre and Derrida. They would go to lectures and have spirited debates about politics and philosophy.

Claudine could get more than a handful of words out of Morse. He could speak quite well when he wanted to, she was certain of it, she had that on good authority from her father, who had so often complained that Morse never seemed able to hold _back_ his words, to hold his peace.

She looked into Morse's face, looking into his eyes directly, unflinchingly, as if to salvage some shred of her old pride, as if to show him that she didn’t care one way or the other, either. 

But he was looking down, his eyes lowered, veiled by russet lashes, staring at a spot on the ground.

Joan felt an odd pang of remorse.

He looked almost as if she had struck him.

“You’ll _like_ her,” she said, cajolingly, as if to soften a blow she hadn’t realized herself that she had delivered.

Morse said nothing.

“She’s pretty,” she said.

“I’m sure.”

“And French.”

Morse huffed a small, rueful laugh. “Not matchmaking?” he asked.

“You need looking after,” Joan replied. “You’ll like her.”

“I’m not on the market right now. Thank you, though.”

His face fell, then, and he cast his eyes back down to the ground, his shoulders sagging a bit beneath the crisp white shirt, bleached bright in the slanting light.

Joan found herself holding her breath. Perhaps, she had been wrong, after all. Or perhaps she had been right the first time, and wrong the second.

Perhaps, in just another moment, he would say something. Something quite different.

_I’m not on the market right now._

_Because my heart already belongs to someone else._

_You mean the world . . ._

But instead, he exhaled sharply, as if letting out a steadying breath, and turned away, stealing a glance at his watch.

“Actually, I should probably go,” he said.

And, just like that, he started to walk away.

“You just _got_ here,” Joan protested.

“Yeah,” he conceded. “Work.”

Joan frowned. And something suddenly came up? It wasn’t as if he had just received a pressing call from her father up here on the _roof._

“I just wanted to wish you well,” Morse said. “Hope it’s a happy place for you. Fresh start.”

And then her turned away once more.

And that was that.

After all of these years.

She felt a wave of sadness, then— whether for the loss of Morse, because he was walking out of her life, or for herself, because he took the memory of her old self, of a fresh and hopeful girl who once stood on the threshold of her parent’s doorway, away with him, she wasn’t sure. It was a new sort of melancholy, almost like nostalgia, like the bittersweet loss of youth and love and misguided hopes all rolled into one. It was something she could not quite put into words, but something rather more ineffable, rather more complicated.

Just like Morse himself.

He had almost reached the window, when he stopped and turned back. 

For a long moment, he simply looked at her; and Joan could almost feel it, the whirling of the wheels of his mind, the slow and glacial gathering of his resolve.

“To me,” he said.

The odd words, spoken so abruptly, caught Joan by surprise. She wasn't sure what she had been expecting, exactly, but the two simple words, spoken semingly apropos of nothing, were definitely not on the list.

“What?” she asked.

But Morse said nothing. He only stood there, stock still, as if he couldn’t quite believe himself that he had spoken.

“To me,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to say. That morning. That . . .” 

He cast his gaze down, then, and pulled on his ear, and then looked back up at her. 

“To me.”

Her eyes widened. Immediately, she knew what he meant by “that morning.” The morning they had stood on the pavement in the coolness of the indigo dawn.

And he must have _known_ that she knew, known from the look on her face, because he took two tentative steps closer.

“I meant to say ‘to me,’” he said.

He smiled, then, a bit sadly, as if it was all a moot point, now, anyway, as if he was casting it all to the four winds, before saying goodbye.

“You mean the world to me,” he said.

Joan stood by the low wall, scarcely remembering to breathe. She waited for him to close the distance between them, to bridge that gulf at last, but still, he remained where he was.

_This is as close as I get._

His eyes were on her as if he was overwhelmed by the enormity of what he had just done. They were full of shimmer, his eyes, just as they had been on that morning, as if full of tears, as if full of a blue and enormous intensity that he scarcely seemed able to maintain. He looked almost as if he might implode under the strain of it all.

“The world?” she asked, with smile in her voice, with a bit of lightness to diffuse the tension that hung in the air between them. “You mean as much as all this?”

She beckoned to the city behind her, then, her voice lilting. And it was the old game, the flirting on her way home to her parents' house.

_"So we have a long kiss under the porch light, until my dad taps on the window and then I go in and you go home.”_

“Even as much as all the dreaming spires of Oxford?” she laughed.

But he didn’t. He simply kept looking at her, his eyes bright and solemn.

“Yes,” he said.

She deepened her smile, then, hoping he might let his shoulders drop, let the set of his jawline relax, hoping he might smile back. Wonderful as it was to hear those words at last, she hated the idea that it pained him so to say them, that they were almost pulled from him against this will. She wished he would soften his stance, at least, rather than look as if he was inwardly vibrating to the point of breaking to pieces. 

Because perhaps on an evening like this, anything _was_ possible.

Perhaps they _might_ have a fresh start—not as DI Thursday’s bagman and daughter, not as a young constable and a bank teller at a holdup, but simply as their truest selves, simply as any woman and man on a rooftop at sunset, simply as Joan and . . . .

She stepped closer to him, closing the gap between them herself, looking up into his pained face.

“Well. You know what that means, don’t you?” she asked.

His eyes wavered back and forth over her face at unclockable speed.

“What?” he asked.

“Well. If I mean that much, it’s high time you stopped standing on ceremony with this ‘ _Miss Thursday’_ business.”

After all, she could be more . . . No, _was_ more, han her father’s daughter.

“I think you might at least call me Joan.”

For a moment, he looked dumbfounded. Then he swallowed, looking slightly hopeful. As if he had expected an axe to fall, and had been spared his execution.

“All right,” he said, as if testing the word out. “Joan.”

Joan smiled.

Three syllables that time.

And then nothing more.

“Well?” Joan asked, still looking up into his face, cast pale and golden in the light of the sunset.

“Well what?” he replied.

“Well, what about you?” she asked.

A faint crease formed between his brows. “What about me?”

“Well. Am I to go on calling you Morse?”

He stared at her blankly, the shimmer in his eyes frosting over, his expression clouding, and she could almost see it, his pulling back, as if he was fleeing backwards into the tunnels of those big eyes, until his face wore once more that old careful and careless mask.

And then he shrugged.

The man _actually_ shrugged.

As if all that had just transpired meant nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Just when she thought they had come so far, they were right back where they started.

Joan felt herself sinking, the hope washing out of her with her exhaled breath.

Half of her felt as if her heart was falling, sailing right over the edge of the very goddamned roof that Morse had been so worried about.

The other half of her wanted to pitch Morse right over the edge with it.

Well.

That was an interesting turn around the merry-go-round, anyway.

They were like those two ends of the telephone line, waiting, always waiting, for the other to pick up the line.

_Morse. Come on, Morse. Just answer._

_Hello? Miss Thursday._

Each and every conversation punctuated by the incessant buzz of a dial tone.

“Well, then. Morse,” she said, with the old practiced formality.

And, again, he said nothing.

What else was there to say?

_This is as close as I get._

“I’d better go down to the party,” Joan said, at last. “I don’t want to leave my flatmates with all the work.”

“Mmmmmm,” Morse said.

Joan huffed a laugh.

_Mmmmm…._

Not even a comprehensible word, that time.

She turned and started walking toward the window, the sound of her heels on the stone roof sounding like punctuation marks, the periods at the end of a string of half-finished sentences, and the book was closed at last, he was letting her go on her way, he would never be willing to meet her halfway on anything, and that was . . .

“Miss Th… Joan?” Morse called.

She paused.

And then she turned back. “Yes?”

“Would you like to go somewhere afterwards? Once the party winds down? For coffee? Whenever you’re free to talk?”

The quip was right there, right on the tip of her tongue.

_“Oh, no. I shouldn’t think so. I’m not the sort to go about with strange men whose names I don’t know."_

It would suit well, be in keeping with the old game.

_"And what sort are you?"_

_"I’m the sort that sees young ladies safely home."_

But her heart wasn't in the old game. Not because of the pain she felt in her heart at the realization that such words were no longer true—she had gone about, hadn't she?—with a man who, it had transpired, she did not know at all. 

No, not only because of that.

But because of the pain that was back on Morse’s face, that strained earnestness, as if it had cost him all he had to say that handful of words.

“Fresh start?” she asked.

“Mmmmmm.”

Joan was ready to shake her head in despair.

_Mmmmmm._

Again, she hadn't even gotten one word out of him that time.

But yet, as she considered him, she found that the words that were written on his face rang clear.

Morse was not easy to talk to. But he was, after all, easy enough to read.

Other men she had known had been quite the opposite. Ray had been so charming at first, so smooth, so glib, and there had been compliments and flowers and sweet nothings and black moods that came out of nowhere. He had words by the bucketful, but none of them matched what he had to say so well as the back of his hand.

Ray had words and fountains of words, and not one of them had meant a single thing.

She wasn’t quite sure how it should be, but, somehow, Morse’s few words weighed all the heavier, all the truer, all the more precious, in the palm of her hand. 

“I’ll tell you, then,” he said, and, again, the words seemed wrenched out of him against his will.

He put a hand to the back of his nape, scrubbed up the curls there.

“I’ll . . . I'll tell you . . . whatever it is you want to know. My name.” 

Joan frowned. There was else something there, something beyond the mere embarrassment over a name like Sylvester or Mortimer. There was something else, some meaning or some bonds of feeling that had gotten tangled up somehow in his name, whatever it was. Suddenly, she felt as if she was treading on sacred ground.

Trusting her with his name, she realized, in Morse's mind, was the same as trusting her with his heart.

She smiled, not lightly as she had before, but with a trace of gratitude, as if to show him she understood the faith he was putting into her. And then it all came naturally, falling into it, the old game.

Anything to get the strain from the lines of his thin face. 

“What do I get if I guess it first?” she asked, and immediately she was rewarded by a flood of light, streaming into Morse’s sunlit face.

“Oh,” he said, with a quirk of a smile. “I hardly think there will be any danger of that.”

“Not Rumpelstiltskin, is it?”

And even the daffy smile was back again.

“No.”

“All right then,” Joan said. “Coffee.”

She turned to head back to the window, but then, she twirled around, much as she had done the afternoon on the pavement, when she had run into him at the chemist’s.

“But don’t go anywhere,” she said, teasingly.

He smiled, and it was the old, familiar, lopsided smile.

“I won’t,” he said.

Two words that time, as heavy as a vow.

Morse might be a bit difficult to fathom, but if Joan had learned nothing else over the past few months, it was that it was the mistakes in life, the wrong turns and divergences, came all too easily.

_I slipped._

Dad might be impossible, overbearing, far too quick to put his two cents in, but one thing he had told her that day in Leamington was true: the best things in life are the things that you have to work for.

She paused at the open window, and chanced one last glance at Morse before ducking through. He was still standing, right where she had left him, his hair ruffled up by a light summer wind, that same surprised smile on his face, utterly dazed, as if it hadn’t quite caught up with him that he had actually pulled it off, as if he couldn’t quite believe his own good luck.

When he caught her looking, he shrugged again, with one bony shoulder, and then followed after her with his easy, lolling gait.

It was true, Joan thought, that Morse might be a bit of an endeavour.

But life had taught her that the more difficult things are the ones that are worth it in the end.


End file.
